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Code page 936 (IBM)
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<h2 id="history">History</h2> <p>The encoding was in use mainly during the 1980s and early 1990s. While the original IBM PC (<a href="/facts/IBM_5150/yhcJGMPL">IBM 5150</a>) lacked functionality for processing data in <a href="/facts/CJK_characters/TGz9tR4C">CJK</a> languages, the <a href="/facts/IBM_5550/RVTgSfPy">IBM 5550</a> possessed such functionality, and was available in models supporting Japanese, <a href="/facts/Korean_language/dmNnRxAA">Korean</a>, <a href="/facts/Traditional_Chinese/bBFLkuz7">Traditional Chinese</a> or <a href="/facts/Simplified_Chinese/UcAD6xXs">Simplified Chinese</a>. Code page 936 for Simplified Chinese accompanied <a href="/facts/Code_page_932_(IBM)/r4L2zMhY">code page 932</a> (<a href="/facts/Shift_JIS/9j7nb3fr">Shift JIS</a>) for Japanese, <a href="/facts/Code_page_934/emLwFFpC">code page 934</a> for Korean and code page 938 for Traditional Chinese. </p><p>The last revision of IBM-928/936/946 was documented in 1992, and it was superseded in 1993 by the <a href="/facts/EUC-CN/eMDCPy2B">EUC-CN</a>-based <a href="/facts/Code_page_1380/eMDCPy2B">code pages 1380 through 1383</a>; code page 1380 encodes the same characters as code page 928, but in a different layout.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6"><sup>6</sup></a> As of 1998, "some older Chinese packages" still included an algorithm for converting between IBM-936 and other encodings of GB 2312.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:7" href="#fn:7"><sup>7</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="status">Status</h2> <p>Although chart definitions for Code page 1380 (the document C-H 3-3220-130 1993-11) are provided online by IBM, IBM does not similarly provide the chart definition for the older Code page 928 (the document C-H 3-3220-130 1992-11, i.e. an earlier revision of the same specification).<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8"><sup>8</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9"><sup>9</sup></a> <a href="/facts/International_Components_for_Unicode/SVyD2Yr5">International Components for Unicode</a> (ICU) does not include an IBM-936 or IBM-946 codec, and uses the Windows code page for the "cp936" label.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:10" href="#fn:10"><sup>10</sup></a> The ICU project does possess mapping data for IBM-946, which it makes publicly available,<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:11" href="#fn:11"><sup>11</sup></a> but does not ship it with ICU. </p> <h2 id="structure">Structure</h2> <p>Code page 928, the double byte component, includes 9,355 characters as double-byte sequences starting with 0x81 through 0xAC and 0xF0 through 0xFA.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:12" href="#fn:12"><sup>12</sup></a> </p><p>The 0x81–AC lead byte range is used for GB 2312 characters: lead bytes 0x81–87 were used for non-hanzi, 0x88–9C are used for level 1 hanzi and 0x9C–AC are used for level 2 hanzi.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:13" href="#fn:13"><sup>13</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:14" href="#fn:14"><sup>14</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:15" href="#fn:15"><sup>15</sup></a> Like <a href="/facts/Shift_JIS/9j7nb3fr">Shift JIS</a>, trail (second) bytes are in the range 0x40–FC excluding 0x7F, allowing two GB 2312 rows to be encoded per lead byte;<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:16" href="#fn:16"><sup>16</sup></a> unlike Shift JIS, the bytes 0xA0–AC are not excluded from the lead byte range,<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:17" href="#fn:17"><sup>17</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:18" href="#fn:18"><sup>18</sup></a> since <a href="/facts/JIS_X_0201/JEICqrnA">JIS X 0201</a> compatibility was not required. The 0xF0–FA lead byte range is used for IBM extensions: 0xF0 through 0xF9 are used for user-defined characters, and 0xFA is used for additional non-hanzi.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:19" href="#fn:19"><sup>19</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>Lunde, Ken (2009). "Chapter 4: Encoding Methods (§ Code Pages)". CJKV Information Processing (2nd ed.). Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly Media. pp. 278–282. ISBN 978-0-596-51447-1. <a href="978-0-596-51447-1" target="_blank">978-0-596-51447-1</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>"CCSID 936". IBM. Archived from the original on March 27, 2016. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160327035758/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid936.html" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20160327035758/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid936.html</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>Lunde, Ken (2009). "Chapter 4: Encoding Methods (§ Code Pages)". CJKV Information Processing (2nd ed.). Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly Media. pp. 278–282. ISBN 978-0-596-51447-1. <a href="978-0-596-51447-1" target="_blank">978-0-596-51447-1</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:4"><p>"CCSID 946". IBM. Archived from the original on March 26, 2016. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160326215526/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid946.html" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20160326215526/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid946.html</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:5"><p>Lunde, Ken (2009). "Chapter 4: Encoding Methods (§ Code Pages)". CJKV Information Processing (2nd ed.). Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly Media. pp. 278–282. ISBN 978-0-596-51447-1. <a href="978-0-596-51447-1" target="_blank">978-0-596-51447-1</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:6"><p>"Table 1: Registration of GCSGID and CPGID for the IBM CH-S Graphic Character Set". C-H 3-3220-130 1993-11: IBM Simplified Chinese Graphic Character Set (PDF). 1993. p. 6. <a href="https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP01380.pdf" target="_blank">https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP01380.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:7"><p>Leisher, Mark (2008) [1998-03-06]. "SHIFTGB.TXT: Shifted GB2312.1980. Generated from an algorithm provided with some older Chinese packages". Department of Mathematical Sciences, New Mexico State University. Archived from the original on January 20, 2023. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230120125054/http://sofia.nmsu.edu/~mleisher/Software/csets/SHIFTGB.TXT" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20230120125054/http://sofia.nmsu.edu/~mleisher/Software/csets/SHIFTGB.TXT</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:8"><p>"Table 1: Registration of GCSGID and CPGID for the IBM CH-S Graphic Character Set". C-H 3-3220-130 1993-11: IBM Simplified Chinese Graphic Character Set (PDF). 1993. p. 6. <a href="https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP01380.pdf" target="_blank">https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP01380.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:9"><p>"Code page 928 information document". Archived from the original on March 17, 2016. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160317015802/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/cp/cp00928.html" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20160317015802/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/cp/cp00928.html</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:10"><p>"windows-936-2000 (alias cp936)". ICU Demonstration – Converter Explorer. International Components for Unicode. <a href="https://ssl.icu-project.org/icu-bin/convexp?conv=cp936" target="_blank">https://ssl.icu-project.org/icu-bin/convexp?conv=cp936</a> <a href="#fnref:10" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:11"><p>"ibm-946_P100-1995". International Components for Unicode Data Repository. Unicode Consortium, IBM. <a href="https://github.com/unicode-org/icu-data/blob/main/charset/data/ucm/ibm-946_P100-1995.ucm" target="_blank">https://github.com/unicode-org/icu-data/blob/main/charset/data/ucm/ibm-946_P100-1995.ucm</a> <a href="#fnref:11" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:12"><p>"CCSID 928 information document". Archived from the original on March 26, 2016. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160326215312/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid928.html" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20160326215312/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid928.html</a> <a href="#fnref:12" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:13"><p>Leisher, Mark (2008) [1998-03-06]. "SHIFTGB.TXT: Shifted GB2312.1980. Generated from an algorithm provided with some older Chinese packages". Department of Mathematical Sciences, New Mexico State University. Archived from the original on January 20, 2023. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230120125054/http://sofia.nmsu.edu/~mleisher/Software/csets/SHIFTGB.TXT" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20230120125054/http://sofia.nmsu.edu/~mleisher/Software/csets/SHIFTGB.TXT</a> <a href="#fnref:13" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:14"><p>"Table 1: Registration of GCSGID and CPGID for the IBM CH-S Graphic Character Set". C-H 3-3220-130 1993-11: IBM Simplified Chinese Graphic Character Set (PDF). 1993. p. 6. <a href="https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP01380.pdf" target="_blank">https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP01380.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:14" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:15"><p>"ibm-946_P100-1995". International Components for Unicode Data Repository. Unicode Consortium, IBM. <a href="https://github.com/unicode-org/icu-data/blob/main/charset/data/ucm/ibm-946_P100-1995.ucm" target="_blank">https://github.com/unicode-org/icu-data/blob/main/charset/data/ucm/ibm-946_P100-1995.ucm</a> <a href="#fnref:15" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:16"><p>"ibm-946_P100-1995". International Components for Unicode Data Repository. Unicode Consortium, IBM. <a href="https://github.com/unicode-org/icu-data/blob/main/charset/data/ucm/ibm-946_P100-1995.ucm" target="_blank">https://github.com/unicode-org/icu-data/blob/main/charset/data/ucm/ibm-946_P100-1995.ucm</a> <a href="#fnref:16" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:17"><p>"Table 1: Registration of GCSGID and CPGID for the IBM CH-S Graphic Character Set". C-H 3-3220-130 1993-11: IBM Simplified Chinese Graphic Character Set (PDF). 1993. p. 6. <a href="https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP01380.pdf" target="_blank">https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP01380.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:17" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:18"><p>"ibm-946_P100-1995". International Components for Unicode Data Repository. Unicode Consortium, IBM. <a href="https://github.com/unicode-org/icu-data/blob/main/charset/data/ucm/ibm-946_P100-1995.ucm" target="_blank">https://github.com/unicode-org/icu-data/blob/main/charset/data/ucm/ibm-946_P100-1995.ucm</a> <a href="#fnref:18" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:19"><p>"Table 1: Registration of GCSGID and CPGID for the IBM CH-S Graphic Character Set". C-H 3-3220-130 1993-11: IBM Simplified Chinese Graphic Character Set (PDF). 1993. p. 6. <a href="https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP01380.pdf" target="_blank">https://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/globalization/gcoc/attachments/CP01380.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:19" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>